


If This Were Played

by tartanfics



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Shakespeare, Theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-12
Updated: 2011-07-12
Packaged: 2017-10-21 08:23:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tartanfics/pseuds/tartanfics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>”Why does Mycroft think we want tickets to see Hamlet?” John asks.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	If This Were Played

**Author's Note:**

> I thought Sherlock had killed my ability to write anything short, but look at this, it’s short! Also, I know the RSC did Hamlet at the Novello Theatre in 2008, but this isn’t meant to be the same production. Beta credit to [](http://miss-sabre.livejournal.com/profile)[ **miss_sabre**](http://miss-sabre.livejournal.com/) .

For Christmas one year, Mycroft gives them tickets to the theatre. That’s the year they miss Christmas dinner because they're busy chasing down a serial arsonist, so Mycroft brings the tickets over on Boxing Day.

John comes in carrying a bag of Chinese (the only restaurant open) and blowing on his fingers to get the blood circulating, to find Mycroft sitting in his chair, fingering the handle of his omnipresent umbrella and being ignored by Sherlock.

"Happy Christmas, John."

"Yes, Happy Christmas, Boxing Day, and all. Sorry we had to miss dinner."

"Crime waits for no holiday, I take it. Was your case satisfactorily concluded?"

"Sherlock hasn't told you?"

Mycroft's expression tells John he's a fool to expect Sherlock to tell Mycroft anything.

"It went all right, yeah." John sets the food on the coffee table, and sits down on it himself. Sherlock is in his chair, hands steepled under his chin and watching Mycroft as though he expects him to make a sudden attack.

"I’ve just brought back dinner; you’re welcome to join us." Sherlock’s eyes narrow.

"My faith in the quality of the Chinese round the corner is very limited, I am afraid."

"Yes, why didn't you go to the one at the end of Baker Street?" Sherlock asks, looking away from Mycroft for the first time.

"Closed. They must celebrate Christmas."

"How curious," Mycroft says, sounding not at all surprised. He pauses. "Do visit Mummy soon, Sherlock. She was most disappointed to miss you for Christmas."

Sherlock actually nods at that. Sherlock is surprisingly affectionate towards his mother, and though he doesn't visit he often he does do so regularly. John finds her enormously intimidating, in the way everyone else is intimidated by Sherlock or Mycroft and John is normally immune to. He is, on the whole, glad they had an excuse to miss dinner, although he objects to working on Christmas, on principle.

"Your dinner is no doubt getting cold," Mycroft says. "I shall leave you to it." He stands, swinging his umbrella, and nods. “There’s an envelope on the mantelpiece, John. I shall entrust it to your keeping.”

John stops himself from asking what’s in it, and stands up to see Mycroft out the door.

When John comes back into the living room, Sherlock is standing at the window, watching Mycroft getting into his car. “You ought to wish your brother a happy Christmas,” John tells Sherlock, wishing he didn’t sound like a nagging mother.

“It would only encourage him.”

John crosses the room and picks up the envelope, which is leaning against the skull. It’s very thick cream-coloured paper, and the adhesive edge comes away without tearing.

“Why does he think we want tickets to see _Hamlet_?” John asks, looking at the two tickets inside the envelope.

“Which company?” Sherlock asks.

“Uh, Royal Shakespeare.” John crosses the room and leans against the window frame next to Sherlock. “I didn’t know you liked Shakespeare. You never go to plays.”

“They always get it wrong. There’s no point in going to the theatre just to see them get everything _wrong_. Mycroft must know this one’s all right, if he’s giving us tickets.” Sherlock snatches the tickets out of John’s hand and examines them. “The Novello Theatre, Stalls F13 and 14. Acceptable.”

“I’ve never known you to get this excited over a gift from Mycroft,” John says, grinning. Sherlock glares at him a moment, and then breaks into a smile.

“The potential of well-done Shakespeare, John!” he says, taking hold of John’s wrist and running his thumb around the bone.

“I would’ve expected you to delete Shakespeare,” John says. “I might as well have, after I got out of school.”

“Of course not,” Sherlock says. “Shakespeare is often relevant to my work. His plays are the prototype for much of the world’s crime and intrigue.”

John chuckles. “Should have known, I suppose.”

Sherlock grins at him, and shoves the tickets back into the envelope still in his hand. “Don’t lose those, John.”

-

John usually avoids making plans that have to happen at a specific date and time. More often than not a case comes up, and John will find himself lurking behind a skip in an alley or patching up a cut on Sherlock’s forehead, looking at his watch and realising he was meant to be at a rugby match by now, or out to dinner with his sister. He’s hoping Sherlock remembers they have theatre tickets, because his record for remembering things like that is pretty dismal, and he thinks Sherlock would be sorry to miss _Hamlet_.

“Put a suit on, John,” Sherlock tells him at 5 o’clock one Saturday afternoon, and John looks up from his paper, momentarily confused. Sherlock is wearing one of his nicer suits, a soft deep black one he never wears to crime scenes. His white shirt isn’t any more buttoned up than usual, but it does look very crisp. Sherlock looks positively handsome. He straightens his cuffs and plucks the thick envelope off the table, tucking it into his jacket pocket. “Not the brown one, please.”

John frowns. The brown suit is the comfortable, slightly too big one. His only other suit, dark grey, fits a little too well for his liking. “Hurry up, John, you’ll make us late to dinner.”

“Dinner, really? Where are we going?”

“Angelo’s.”

“I don’t need a suit to eat at Angelo’s.”

“No, you need a suit to go to the theatre.”

“Oh. All right.” John sets the paper aside and goes up the stairs. Sherlock follows, and John feels vaguely insulted, as though Sherlock doesn’t trust his ability to dress himself.

Sherlock leans in the doorway and watches as John pulls the suit out of the wardrobe and lays it on the bed, and starts pulling his jumper over his head. “I was afraid you’d forget about this,” John says, muffled, to the inside of his jumper. “Or a case would come up you couldn’t refuse.”

“Of course not, John. I never pass up the promise of an adequate production of _Hamlet_.”

“It had better be more than adequate,” John says, unbuttoning his shirt. “I don’t want to listen to you complain about what they got wrong all the way home.” He pulls out two fresh shirts, a white one and a pale purple one, and holds them up for Sherlock’s opinion. Sherlock nods toward the white one.

“That’s half the point of going to the theatre,” Sherlock says, as John kicks off his shoes and his trousers.

“What is?” he asks, putting on the white shirt.

“Dissecting the production on the way home.”

John sighs, resigned. “Do I have to wear a tie?” he asks, pulling one out.

“Come here,” Sherlock says softly. John crosses the room and Sherlock takes the tie out of his hand, unfolding it and draping it around John’s neck. He ties a deft half Windsor knot, and tightens it against John’s throat, smoothing his collar down over it. John slips his hand under the edge of Sherlock’s jacket and flattens it against Sherlock’s shoulder, then reaches up to kiss the corner of his mouth.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying this,” John murmurs.

“Put your trousers on,” Sherlock says.

John huffs a laugh, and does as he’s told.

-

Dinner is quiet. Angelo brings them a candle for the table, and it’s routine by now. John stopped protesting even before the slow evolution of their relationship made “more romantic” relevant.

“What was the first play you ever saw?” John asks, spearing his ravioli with his fork.

“ _The Merchant of Venice_.”

“What, a ‘pound of flesh’?”

“That’s the one.”

John wrinkles his nose. “How old were you?”

“Seven. Mother took Mycroft and me to London for a day and we went to the National Theatre.”

“I’m not sure I can picture your mother going to plays, either.”

“She was an actress, briefly, before I was born.”

John tries to imagine Sherlock’s mother, in her youth, playing Ophelia or Juliet, and is suddenly even more intimidated by her than he was before. The austere and darkly humourous woman he knows seems like an unlikely candidate for the stage.

Sherlock is clearly watching John absorb this information and adjust his worldview accordingly. “Did Mycroft like it?” John asks.

“He liked the political parts. I liked the pound of flesh.”

“Of course you did.”

John drinks a second glass of wine--more than usual, but this feels like a special occasion. He’s wearing a suit, and there’s a candle on the table, and Sherlock is looking forward to something other than crime. He nudges Sherlock’s foot under the table and grins at him, and Sherlock can’t stop a smile creeping over his face--the smile that says, “you’re being silly, but I like you anyway.”

-

Sherlock leads the way through the crowd in the lobby of the theatre. John keeps a hand on his back, partly so they don’t lose each other, partly because John likes the feel of the fabric against his fingertips. Sherlock hands their tickets to an usher, who directs them to their seats. They’re close to the stage, but not too close; Sherlock seems satisfied. He steeples his fingers against his lips and looks around.

It’s a beautiful theatre--cushy red seats, gold detailing on cream walls, plush carpets. John has never liked theatre for its own sake so much as for the experience. He likes watching the other audience members as they file into their seats and bicker and drop their programmes. He likes the knowledge that famous people have been on the stage. John’s never been interested in small-time theatre, in tiny converted rooms or outdoors. He doesn’t really know anything about theatre, so he appreciates what he can.

The last time John saw a play he was at university, dragged along by a girlfriend who was studying English and enamoured of Shakespeare. The play they saw had been one of the histories, utterly boring for John. He had liked being there, though, watching other people’s reactions to the play and admiring the set, the costumes. John has an appreciation for luxury and entertainment, if not for art.

John unbuttons his jacket and tugs at his tie, settling into his seat. They still have ten minutes before the play starts. “All right?” John asks.

Sherlock nods, distracted. “Go and fetch me a programme, if you’re bored.”

John shrugs and gets up again, figuring he might as well take his last chance to stretch his legs for a while.

When he gets back Sherlock seems to be having an altercation with the woman sitting next to him. John sighs, dumps his programme on his seat, and leans over Sherlock to placate the woman. She’s large, elderly, and decked in pearls, and John’s not surprised Sherlock’s managed to offend her in the course of such a short acquaintance. “Don’t mind him,” John says to her, smiling charmingly. He presses a hand against Sherlock’s arm to hold him back. “He’s only keeping himself entertained before the show; I promise he’ll be well-behaved once it starts.”

She seems to trust John’s ability to fulfill this promise, as though Sherlock were a dog and John his master who’d left him tied outside to bark at passing strangers.

Situation dealt with, John drops into his seat and hands the programme to Sherlock, just as the lights begin to dim.

John rather likes Hamlet as soon as he comes on stage. He’s--well, a lot like Sherlock. Dark and clever and occasionally gloomy. After he puts on his antic disposition the resemblance becomes even stronger--gloominess interspersed with sudden dramatic movements and manic monologues. John wonders if Sherlock notices this, or if some Hamlet Sherlock saw in his youth had an influence on him.

The pace of the story pulls John in, and he finds himself worrying about Ophelia and angry at Gertrude, sympathizing with Horatio. Periodically, though, John becomes suddenly conscious of Sherlock’s presence at his shoulder. Sometimes he looks to see Sherlock’s reaction to things--Hamlet’s first appearance on stage, the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, the ending of the play within the play. Sherlock looks serious and focused, and rather as though he’s taking notes for later consideration.

In the interval, Sherlock walks a circle around the lobby while John goes to the loo, and when they meet again by the door that leads to their seats John eyes Sherlock before he decides not to ask--that would be counting the chickens before they’ve hatched.

Near the end John begins to get both sleepy and restless. He leans on the arm rest between his seat and Sherlock’s, and Sherlock bumps their shoulders together softly. He grins lazily when Sherlock actually laughs at the gravedigger scene (that would be Sherlock’s kind of humour), and sinks into his seat, comfortable.

The final duel wakes John up a bit, and by the time the actors take their bow John’s awake and actually rather looking forward to Sherlock’s dissection of the play, good or bad.

Sherlock doesn’t get up immediately after the play is over; he appears to be waiting for most of the crowd to clear out.

“Well?” John asks, nudging him.

“Well what?”

“What’s the verdict? Did they get it wrong?”

“Not entirely,” Sherlock says, but he seems pleased.

“Shall I thank Mycroft for the tickets, then?”

“If you must.”

Sherlock looks at the stage, as the last of the actors slip away into the wings. He looks as though he’s forming his opinion, weighing the strong and weak points of the production. “They didn’t cut the good bits,” he says finally, “and they did cut Fortinbras and all the boring bits. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were idiots, but that’s unavoidable. Horatio was good.”

“It’s a good thing you’re not a theatre critic,” John mutters. “The theatres would _hate_ you.”

Sherlock smiles briefly, and falls silent. He seems contemplative, looking around the theatre at the audience drifting out into the lobby.

“Had you missed going to plays?” John asks.

Sherlock turns to look at him, but doesn’t answer.

“Because I don’t mind going to plays sometimes, if you like it. If you don’t mind putting off cases for an evening.”

Sherlock reaches out and straightens John’s tie, and then stands up and offers John a hand to pull him to his feet.

“All right,” he says, and the lights on stage fade to black.


End file.
